Perhaps it’s age. Perhaps it’s fate. Perhaps it’s the amount of time I dedicate to watching ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ on BBC Knowledge in the middle of the day. For some reason what started out for me as a mild fascination with history when I was a child is fast turning into a fixation.
Drum roll please. Introducing the man who started it all for me:
My Great-Grandfather, Mutambuka wa Rutogogo.
This is a touched up photograph of a much, much older one currently in the possession of the Rev.
Mutambuka wa Rutogogo, later christened Mark by clerics of the Church Missionary Society, was one of the greatest medicine men in the larger Karagwe region in the early 20th century. So strong is the memory of Mutambuka that one of the larger thoroughfares in Kabale town is named Mutambuka Road.
Anthropologist May Mandelbaum Edel, in her book ‘The Chiga of Western Uganda’ describes her visit with my great-grandfather in 1933.
Mutambuka, leader of one of the clans, was now old and blind:
He has about 17 living wives, having had 21 in all, and was long one of the most important men in these parts. He has a tremendous household, with more small children than I have ever seen before, all tumbling about fairly naked. The place was not so filthy as a smaller one would be. There were squads at work making beer in many large pots. He spoke to me for four hours, Blasio interpreting. If what he told me is true, there was no unit here higher than the clan, whose leader had what judicial and war-leadership authority here was. But of elaborate or even land-tenure-arranging functions, there could be found no trace.
Oral history in my family says Mutambuka’s father, Rutogogo wa Rwancuro, traveled across Lake Bunyonyi and settled on Bukora hill in Kabale. With him he brought the iron working knowledge that defined the Urewe culture. Rutogogo and his family were called the Baheesi – a word that literally means blacksmith. They became central to Kiga culture and the Baheesi clan is one of the largest and most prominent among the Bakiga today.
Why Mutambuka diverted from his family’s business into the world of medicine and spiritualism is not known. It is said people flocked from Nkore, Rwanda, Burundi and the Congo to receive treatment from Mutambuka and to witness his powerful divination.
Mandelbaum Edel again:
One day in the middle of August, I visited Mutambuka. He did not deny he had been one of the most powerful magicians in these parts; and we were for the most part able to understand each without too much crisscrossing and repetition. We were interrupted by other people coming around, so on this occasion we did not get very far. He was an intelligent old man, not influenced much by the new situation. He had served as sub-chief until his blindness became too pronounced.
A 1921 letter from A C Stanley Smith of the CMS written during his mission to Kabale reads:
One of their great chiefs has been attending Dr Sharp for treatment. He is rather a grand and pathetic figure, is old Mutambuka. For by his outstanding personality, his skill as a medicine man and by his many acts of kindness rarely found in a heathen, he had raised himself to a position of great influence in the country. But corneal ulceration destroyed his sight. In spite however of his blindness, he is still the most popular judge and the cleverest too amongst the Bachiga.
Clearly the missionaries knew nothing.
A muzungu friend of mine was totally unimpressed by my findings until I reminded her that the written history of Uganda is only 100 years old. There is so much more that I should know, that I never will.
The Rev tells me that Mutambuka died about 1938. His son, Blasio Mutana, took over as family head at Bukora and the rest of his siblings moved to other areas in the Kigezi region.
The Rev can go back many generations in his genealogy. But when I called him at about 7 a.m. this morning, he was too groggy to remember them all.
This is what he could recall:
Katoozo, father or Shumbusha
Shumbusha*, father or Bebwa
Bebwa, father of Nyarugago
Nyarugago, father of Kyomya
Kyomya, father of Rwancuro
Rwanchuro, father of Rutogogo
Rutogogo, father of Mutambuka
Mutambuka, father of Mutana
Mutana, father of Mugarura-Mutana
Mugarura-Mutana, father Asiimwe, Bwandungi, Ayebare, Twongyeirwe and Tumwijuke.
I want to know more!!
* Shumbusha is not, despite what it sounds like in Ugandanese, some version of the word ‘samosa’. It is a common name among the Banyambo and Bahaya in Tanzania and may even go back to Israel. Some of my relatives contend that it is a derivative from the Jewish name M’shum Busha.
** In discussing this post with a member of the blogren today, he said it was completely against the spirit of everything I espoused in my much debated post, “I am not my Tribe”, which was written a year ago. What can I say? I am flaky and have I have no real convictions apart from those I have today. 
